Leadership Reading to Start Your Week: 8/8/16

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Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms, to start off your work week. I’m pointing you to articles about leadership, strategy, industries, innovation, women and work, and work and learning now and in the future. Highlights include the double game of digital management: managing in times of big data and analytics, how mobile games rake in billions, forecasting the success of innovations, why women feel more stress at work, and how you can ride the wave of change.

Be sure to look for dots that you can connect.

Note: Some links require you to register or are to publications that have some form of limited paywall.

Thinking about Leadership and Strategy

From Philipp Gerbert, Jan Justus, and Andrej Müller: The Double Game of Digital Management: Managing in Times of Big Data and Analytics

“Digital technologies are profoundly transforming not just products, services, and business processes but also management itself and the inner workings of companies. A new generation of executives is relying on data analytics and artificial intelligence to support and make decisions.”

From Judge Business School: Rowing to business success

“Powerful but ‘less obvious’ lessons that Olympic athletes can teach business, from focusing on things you can control to reassessing what ‘winning’ really means.”

From Phanish Puranam: What corporate strategists need to know about synergies

“Understanding the distinctive ‘footprints’ of four different types of synergy can help improve the way you value and implement corporate strategies.”

Industries and Analysis

From Suzette Parmley: Mini-fitness centers going gangbusters in the burbs

“Mini-fitness centers, such as CKO (Club Knock Out), SoulCycle, and Orange Theory, among others, are popping up throughout the suburbs and often at your local shopping center.”

From Sarah Needleman: How Mobile Games Rake In Billions

“Behind a pair of recent multibillion-dollar deals in the mobile videogame industry is an expertly crafted weapon: virtual goods sold inside apps for as little as 99 cents a pop. In-app purchases let players spend real money to bypass advertisements, acquire skills or grow powerful quickly, among other benefits. The terms ‘in-app’ and ‘in-game’ refer to purchases that take place while a person is playing, as opposed to paying outright to buy a game.”

From the Economist: Cutting the cord

“Television is at last having its digital-revolution moment.”

Innovation and Technology

From Rob Shelton: These Five Behaviors Can Create an Innovation Culture

“Many companies want to establish a culture of innovation, one that will encourage employees to take risks that lead to breakthrough products. But how exactly to build this type of culture often eludes senior leaders — threatening the success of their innovation initiatives.”

From Jack Torrance: PwC thinks you can’t afford to ignore these 8 pieces of tech

“Keeping abreast of technological change isn’t easy. From machine learning to self-driving cars, there’s so much noise about every new innovation that it can be hard to separate the pie-in-the-sky thinking from the genuine game changers. But worry not because PwC claims to have sorted the wheat from the chaff, sifting through 150 recent innovations to name the eight it thinks will have the biggest impact in the coming years. From augmented reality to the internet of things, it’s all pretty predictable but it’s interesting to see what the world’s largest professional services firm regards as more than just a fad.”

From Henrich Greve: Forecasting the Success of Innovations

“Creators beat managers at predicting an innovation’s success, unless they’re predicting the success of their own work.”

Women and the Workplace

From Andrea S. Kramer and Alton B. Harris: Why Women Feel More Stress at Work

“Everyone in today’s supercharged workplaces experiences stress. Yet executive and professional women consistently experience more stress, anxiety, and psychological distress than do men. There are, undoubtedly, a variety of reasons for this — more domestic responsibilities, having been socialized to say ‘yes’ to all requests, and receiving lower pay for similar work immediately come to mind. But, based on our experience coaching and mentoring thousands of women over the years, we believe women experience more workplace stress than men primarily because they must contend with stereotype threat — a phenomenon that is virtually unknown to men.”

From Kathy Brewis: The gender pay gap: do women have a sporting chance?

“The recent row over tennis players’ pay highlighted a continuing gender bias in sport. Why does it persist – and what can the world of sport learn from business? Raina Brands explores.”

From Anne Perschel: How to Give Women Effective Feedback

“Learning how to give women effective feedback begins with recognizing and understanding the role unconscious gender bias plays in how we perceive, talk about, and evaluate women in professional roles. The next step in learning how to give women effective feedback involves becoming aware of your own tendencies and making needed adjustments.”

Work and Learning Now and in the Future

From Anne Marie Slaughter: We Can’t Work All the Time

“Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael. Today I’m talking with Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of New America and the author of the new book, Unfinished Business– Women, Men, Work, Family. Anne-Marie, thank you so much for talking with us today.”

From Stephane Kasriel: This Is What Your Future Virtual-Reality Office Will Be Like

“Say goodbye to Skype calls. Here are four ways VR technology is already shaping up to change the future of work.”

From Wharton: The Future of Work: How You Can Ride the Wave of Change

“To a large extent, the public discussion over the future of work has followed a storyline that says technology and globalization are coming to whisk your job away. But behind the obvious forces, other perhaps more powerful factors are at play, says Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli, director of the school’s Center for Human Resources.”

More Leadership Posts from Wally Bock

Yahoo and the strategy that never was

Yahoo managed to last more than twenty years without a coherent strategy.

By and About Leaders: 8/2/16

Pointers to pieces by and about Rob Lloyd, Melissa Barrett, Eddie Lampert, Frances Hesselbein, and Claudio Ranieri.

From the Independent Business Blogs: 8/3/16

Pointers to posts by Anne Perschel, Suzi McAlpine, Aad Boot, Chris Edmonds, and Jesse Lyn Stoner.

Stories and Strategies from Real Life: 8/5/16

Pointers to stories about Yahoo, Hershey’s, Adidas, Whole Foods, and Reebok.

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